Postcard News: Mass producing fake news

On 18th May 2015, Twitter handle of postcard.news tweeted the picture of two young children claiming that they were Balochs who were being killed and brutalised. In reality, this image has been used by multiple media outlets for the past 10 years. It has been available on the photo sharing website Flickr since 2008. Recently, we saw how child abduction rumours on WhatsApp led to the lynching of 8 people. The tiniest of rumour can turn deadly in the age of social media and we as a country need to identify every single outlet that dishes out these fake news, images and videos so as to prevent another Jharkhand from happening.

Postcard.news has been at the forefront in spreading fake news. Multiple websites have documented their efforts at propagating fake news. Here’s a list of articles that have been authored by postcard.news and are absolutely fake.

April 18, 2017: Postcard wrote an article titled “Watch!! Is Birbhum a Part of Pakistan or Bangladesh“. The first sentence of the article is “Jihadi Didi’s West Bengal is a safe haven for all Islamic Fanatics.” In this article they claimed that 2 Muslim IPS officers beat-up Hanuman devotees on the occasion of Hanuman Jayanti on April 11th, 2017. To substantiate their claims, they also posted a video of a police officer beating up a man. Alt News investigated this issue and found it to be absolutely fake. The video that they posted has been available on YouTube since 2014.

May 17, 2017: Postcard posted an article titled “Mamata Banerjee to setup separate engineering entrance exam for minority students.” We searched for this news in main stream media websites and found nothing that was remotely related to this issue in the year 2017. Finally, we found an article dated April, 05, 2014 in Economic Times. Not only were they rehashing a 3 year old story as a present one, they also forgot to mention that the article has stated clearly that Mamta Government is doing so based on Supreme Court directives. The article on Economic Times also states that Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka already had one such system. Ironically, the last sentence of this Postcard article states “It is time the courts step in and put a break on her appeasement politics” while it was Supreme Court’s directives all along.

Jan 20, 2017: Postcard wrote an article titled “Must read! World Economic Forum releases survey on Indian media, the results are shameful!“. It was funny to see a site like Postcard talk about trustworthiness of other media sources. The Postcard article stated that “The World Economic Forum, which released the report has labelled the Indian media as the second most untrusted institution in the world.” They also managed to connect this data with NDTV, Kanhaiya Kumar and Burhan Wani. Boomlive.in investigated this issue and found that “India was among the three countries in which media was trusted. The other countries are China and Indonesia. Moreover, trust in Indian media has increased 3 percentage points from 2016 to 66% in 2017.“.

April 13, 2017: Postcard wrote an article titled “Good News! Yogi decides to end reservation in this sector.” In this article, they claimed that Yogi Adityanath has decided to end reservation in private medical colleges. The Postcard article claimed that it was a landmark step to change the deteriorating picture of Uttar Pradesh. It turned out that no such reservation ever existed according to this article on New India Express.

While Mahesh Hegde is followed by PM Modi on Twitter, Vivek Shetty and Ankita Rajvardhan are followed by other Union Minisers such as Piyush Goyal on Twitter. Ankita Rajvardhan also has pictures with various Union Ministers including Sushma Swaraj, Gen VK Singh, Rajnath Singh on her Twitter profile. Vivek Shetty and Mahesh Hegde regularly promote postcard.news articles through their social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook. At the time of writing, via such blatant fakery as exhibited in this article, Postcard.news is now in the top 500 websites in India in terms of traffic ranking.

Left: Vivek Shetty, Right: Mahesh Vikram Hegde

Alt News requests its readers to be extremely careful about articles from Postcard.news as there is a high likelihood of it being absolutely fake. Also, please feel free to use our Contact Page to send across posts from their website or any other site which you think are fake and we’ll be more than glad to investigate further.

Donate to Alt News!Independent journalism that speaks truth to power and is free of corporate and political control is possible only when people start contributing towards the same. Please consider donating towards this endeavour to fight fake news and misinformation.

The domain postcard.news is a clear violation of its agreement with ICANN. UDRP sections 2.c and 2.d are applicable. The domain is registered in “bad faith” – c. Registration Primarily to Disrupt a Competitor’s Business (here the genuine media are the competitors and they openly declare that); and d. Intent to Attract Users for Commercial Gain by Creating Confusion with a Trademark. Postcard.news carries no news – it’s just a pretension to confuse people.

Now the only difference I’d that they provided proofs and examples of the fakery and all you have told us is that the authors face ‘looks like a rapist’ whatever that is. Maybe you can come up with an article like this to expose altnews ? Will do wonders to your credibility.

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1 year ago

Guest

Ms Bulstrode

Mmm, try looking inside your own collar first. I swear I will start trusting you people once you shut this website down, on your own wihout questioning anything, since you are the epitome of fakeness. Free thinker my ass

Atleast this is genuine News , because of majority of people(including you ) who are only amused by crafted news ,Repetitive News. Our Nation is coming up with this type of bullshit . Dude, Go see how world’s Renowned media ,BBC AND CNN publisheshes variety of Articles and Editorial . But For you News is – Cow , Indian Army , Pakistan , BJP Opposition Pro BJP’s and Jihad .THE END PS- I too Strongly support BJP govt. and never ever have skipped above mentioned topics ,But There’s lot going on other than these . I recommend you to open… Read more »

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1 year ago

Guest

Debojit Dutta

CNN and BBC are the ultimate pinacle of news channels distorting facts. Even their own country people are loosing faith on those news. 😂

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1 year ago

Guest

Karthik

Actually nw CNN and BBC are the bunny like troll material fr their mass ppl😂😂 fake reporting agencies now feel the heat but act like a victim I.e altnews.in

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11 months ago

Guest

Karthik

Nice points but these ppl also target ‘sectarians’ like oppose bjp, oppose Modi mind set. Just think if Talaq, Ninga halala, Jihad, Polygamy, Halal Certification, 5 times per day Prayer Attendance,.. are belongs to Hinduism?!! Oops.. How loud these ‘Mammals’ scream loud alike a Rape victim . As far as, journalism behaves like ‘Appeaseisn’ no one cud stop Right Wing raises which happen around the world now. I wonder how altnews.in now starts to act like a women possess chastity.. Rofl. Lie bag ~ altnews = Muslim appeasement

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11 months ago

Guest

Karthik

Exactly my thought too

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11 months ago

Guest

Guest

lol 😂 😂😂 I see only negative news of the BJP and anybody supporting it but not a single article or Jihadi etc… This itself tells your intentions…!!!!

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1 year ago

Guest

Deepak Yadav

You ate right…altnews is buster of organised fake news network…bjp’s success is symbol of dangerous trend where fake news are helpful to create perceptions. Till the facts are revealed ,the fake news are mostly achieves its target. Altnews is a attempt to highlight this scam…and giving people knowledge how fake news are created and circulated. Rediculing inteelectials librals minorities are favourite subjects. Distorted nationalism is a by-product

Please define who are intellectuals. Are the antigovt preachers, guild of Wapsi, or patroniserd of the corrupt society which has ruined the nation ? BJPs success has not demoralised the people, did not suppress Hindus, did not hide murders and prostitution. Today, all are free to express their opinion, otherwise the insane Mamtha, Foolish Rahul, mad Arvind and some in idiots in South India would not have dared to make personal insult on our tall P.M. by cherishing enormous anger and jealous.

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1 year ago

Guest

Karthik

Simply superb.. 👏👏 just now I too post the same thought of u as a comment.. These altnews.in folks ever wrote an article on Nikkha Halala?!! Lol.. These guys are Tagging themselves as Journos 😑

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11 months ago

Guest

Deepak Yadav

Its the win of altnews where people who are developed utter negative mindset due to overdose of poisonous news by bjp and allied partners, are commenting on this article and poor chaps are factless again and again….they want same poisonous news where logic and facts should match mesmerized and hypnotised minds.

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1 year ago

Guest

lala

they should be banned for such gross fake news. And peoples supporting them should tell their intentions as well .why to resort to lies? have some shame

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1 year ago

Guest

Mohankumar K

ha, ha, big thief questioning the small thief. How can one be sure Alt news is not fake? I will say Alt news is fake. Let it be investigated by an authentic investigating agency, can Alt news do so? Hundreds of such news channel are now existing in SM. Every one copy the news of one another either full or part and make distorted news favouring their bred givers. Many of them are promoted by opposition parties, leftists, anti nationals to confuse the gullible public and some are supported by ruling front to expose them.

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1 year ago

Guest

Jacob

Why don’t you write an article with references as to what exactly is fake about alt news. It will add to your credibility

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1 year ago

Guest

Rajesh

True Indology refuted the false claim of alt news point by point with open challenge to prove him wrong.this prateek sinha ran away..Prateek sinha is the son of mukul sinha who was master in fakery.

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1 year ago

Guest

Karthik

Haha you hit the mark 👏👏👏👏 how do these Fake journos face Indology kind of stuffs. Typing half balked articles are habit for altnews.in

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11 months ago

Guest

Karthik

Rofl max😂😂

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11 months ago

Guest

Nitesh Pandey

Can we petition ad words and other such sits. So that they are not able to get any income and the very reason for their existence is destroyed. Just an idea.

In the age of social media, no body has time to verify the source. Everybody believes whatever they read on social media. Kudos to altnews to expose the site! There should be a case file against the site

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1 year ago

Guest

pakru

Thanks for the good work Altnews. Could you please maintain a top-ten list of popular and fake news spreading sites in India. That will be like a rating to these sites. And browser extension/addon developers can develop extension to show it on the browser itself. Something like ‘Web-Of-Trust’ extension used to do.

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1 year ago

Guest

Dane Wanderer

Thanks to Altnews, that I have come to know how this universe of Fake news, where express intention is to elevate the image BJP and Sanghi’s in the minds of the Hindus. I must say that these websites are succeeding in this purpose , as the proof of the same is found in the cynicism of the comments on this page and otherwise in the opinions expressed elsewhere. Many people have been totally convinced , by the repeated propaganda, that they have started believing of atrocities against Hindus, that Secular and Muslims, are somehow to be blamed for all the… Read more »

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1 year ago

Guest

Kapil

This website is congres handle for BJP. Just check its funding. Common man cannot believe any one in todays world. All have hidden agenda. This website was specifically highlighted on NDTV for promotion. We all know NDTV and anti BJP propaganda it gets into.

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10 months ago

Guest

Bhakt

Why don’t you also list out fake news spread by mainstream media and also, websites like yours?

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8 months ago

Guest

worldcitizen

Another Faking News agency of Congress.

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7 months ago

Guest

Manju Jadhav.

how can such website be blocked this is injustic we must protest

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7 months ago

Guest

Shobhana

Except for point seven and eight, all other news items verifiable and true. Other media who are not the puppeteers monkeys also reported so.

Only your news that postcard.news as a fake, is fake. Grow up.they did not publish half the news you hv claimed as that they hv.

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4 months ago

Guest

Samar

Because they were deleted ‘Fazina’

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4 months ago

Guest

Samar

Here we are – Indians fighting over internet (weakly bypassing the stronger face to face conversation) over which news is true and which one is false. Do you want to be there in a state of utter confusion and on a thin string hanging between truth and lies? At the end of the day we Indians are just like our ancestors – ruled by Britishers because they were never united and today we are again being ruled because we are not united against the real issues. Dear Hindus – no doubt you have suffered in the past. Dear Muslims you… Read more »

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